Smart money pulls bullion out of the soup
That leaves gold as the odd one out. It's down more than 30 per cent from its high of $US1908 ($2067) an ounce just over two years ago.
To be fair it was alone in consistently rising throughout the last decade and demolished the GFC for dinner. Still, that was coming out of a funk during which it went nowhere for years. To get the gold price in perspective, in real terms it still hasn't reached the $US2200 it should be worth had it held on to its peak in 1980 of $US850.
Not that bullion bugs ever point that out, except perhaps as evidence it must be about to take off at any moment.
Or even more ingeniously, they flip the argument around by saying that just means a dollar today buys less gold then it did then and so proves their point. If bullion is the benchmark then paper currencies are the ones losing their real value.
Trouble is everything, unless it has a chip in it, is worth more in today's dollars than 30 years ago so why single out gold?
The sharemarket has done miles better and paid dividends along the way, making it much better protection against inflation.
Granted, you would have needed to buy the right stocks but even so.
The truth is that over the past 30 years gold has been useless against inflation. Yet it's had everything going for it. The near collapse of the paper-based global financial system was a good start. Then came ridiculously low interest rates to undermine its nearest rivals, bonds and cash.
As we speak there's the threat of hyper inflation from all that money printing. And how about the meteoric growth of bullion funds? They trade just like shares and so make buying or selling gold dead easy.
Mind you, they've been a mixed blessing for investors by detracting from goldmining stocks.
That's because bullion funds remove annoying risks such as poor management, debt, wasted exploration expenses and rising operating costs though they have the same currency risk as the goldminers.
They're so massive they hold more gold than entire nations.